I've written about health care for more than two decades, starting from my native Iowa where I covered the presidential campaign bus rides of Bill and Hillary Clinton through the Hawkeye state talking health reform and the economy. I have covered the rise, fall and rise again of health reform, chronicling national trends as well as the influence of Barack and Michelle Obama from Chicago's South Side on changes to the U.S. health system from my base in Chicago. I am the author of the new Forbes signature series book, "Inside Obamacare: The Fix For America's Ailing Health Care System." I was health care business reporter at the Chicago Tribune (1998-2011) and previously wrote for Modern Healthcare magazine when first arriving in Chicago in 1993. Prior to that, I wrote for several Iowa newspapers including the Des Moines Register. These days, I contribute stories to the New York Times, Chicago Medicine magazine and teach in the University of Iowa School of Journalism MA in Strategic Communication program. You can see me nationally on Fox News Channel's "Forbes on Fox" show. In Chicago, you can hear my health segments and business analysis on WBBM newsradio 780 and 105.9 FM. I am passionate about health literacy when it comes to explaining the complexities of health care. A better understood health system may save someone some money or their life.

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson was able to get a settlement with medical bill collector Accretive Health. The company admitted no wrongdoing and its stock is on the rise with strong growth prospects coming under the Affordable Care Act. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Medical bill collector Accretive Health (AH) has agreed to pay $2.5 million in a high-profile settlement with the state of Minnesota following allegations the firm’s employees were too aggressive with patients, pressuring them to pay medical bills.

But don’t expect Accretive to go out of business or hospitals to stop hiring the firm, let alone others like it.

The complexity of the health care system and the way hospitals and doctors are paid is going to keep Accretive in business beyond the fraction of money it made that involved collecting patients’ bills. And it’s a key reason why the price of the company’s stock soared Tuesday, a day after the settlement became public.

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson had accused Chicago-based Accretive, one of the nation’s largest collectors of medical bills, of violating patient privacy and debt collection laws. Among Accretive’s alleged tactics were putting employees in emergency rooms, demanding patients pay before receiving treatment, in what some have called “bedside pressure.”

Accretive Health strongly denied wrongdoing. “Even though we believe the claims against us were either baseless or exaggerated, we have used this opportunity to carefully examine our own practices in order to ensure we are setting the very highest standards for our own performance and achieving the best possible outcomes for hospitals, patients and communities.” said Mary Tolan, Chief Executive Officer, in the company’s statement.

Once 30 million uninsured Americans have help paying their bills under the Affordable Care Act, there would seemingly be less reason for hospitals or their bill collectors to need debt collectors given patients will be able to pay their bills.

But Accretive did more than collect bills and its services will still likely thrive even as millions of Americans obtain the ability to pay their bills in 2014 when broader health care coverage kicks in.

Accretive has a long tradition of battling on hospitals’ behalf with insurance industry giants like Aetna (AET), Humana (HUM) and UnitedHealth (UNH) to make sure providers are getting paid what they are owed. That is not going to change anytime soon.

Absent a massive and perfect publicity campaign that results in all Americans actually knowing what kind of coverage they are going to have, hospitals will still need to encourage patients to sign up for coverage.

Even when hospitals have patients covered by Medicaid health insurance for the poor, they often have to sign patients up for this coverage. Hospitals long complain that Medicaid doesn’t cover their costs of doing business, but hospitals increasingly employ their own patient advocates or companies like Accretive to sign people up to government insurance.

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